Saturday morning spinning at the retreat

I wrote this post this morning. Honest. But cell service up here is abysmal, and the bandwidth of the wifi gets maxed out pretty quickly. It’s almost midnight, and I can get good enough internet access to upload a few pictures and finally publish my post. I’ve added in some updates too. Enjoy!

Good morning everyone, and happy Saturday! I’ve been having a great time here at the Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat even though I haven’t done much knitting. I’ve done quite a bit of spinning so far though. Yesterday afternoon I lead a workshop for beginning spinners. Four guys who have never spun yarn before learned the basics of spinning on a wheel and created their very first hand spun yarns. A few other guys who didn’t sign up for that workshop will get a one on one intro to spinning later today, and later on this morning I’m leading a workshop for intermediate spinners and introducing them to woolen drafting techniques.

[Saturday night update – the woolen drafting workshop was awesome! Each of the guys learned a few new tricks to help them along their spinning journey. One of the guys lamented that all he could make was rope, but this morning he made beautiful and fluffy yarn.]

There are a lot of wheels here this weekend, most of them Lendrums (I counted six of them). There are also two Schacht Matchless and two Schacht Sidekick wheels, my Edammertje, a Louet, an Ashford Joy, and the Bliss, a brand new wheel from Woolmakers which will get it’s own blog post soon.

I chose to start new spinning project this weekend. The fiber is an 80/20 blend of Coopworth and alpaca. The label says “Alpa-coop” which I think sounds a little weird, like some kind of dog food product. “Coop-paca” sounds a little better. There’s about 2 pounds of it in my stash but I only brought a pound with me this weekend. I doubt I’ll get through all of what I brought while I’m here but I’ve made a good dent in it, that’s for sure. It’s a well carded preparation that makes long draw a breeze and it’s spinning up pretty quickly.

My spinning spot in the great room of the lodge building is right in front of the wall east facing windows. It got a little warm here as the sun rose, and I had to vacate the space for morning yoga. Breakfast will be served soon, and then I can go back to spinning for a bit before the day gets going. There’s knitting to be done as well. I have to remember that. After all, this is a knitting retreat.

About the author

Hi, I'm Aaron, a knitter, spinner, and weaver living in Albany, New York with my dear husband and our three dogs. My fiber journey began with knitting in 2006. Spinning and weaving soon followed. Despite several attempts to learn, I still cannot crochet.

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